


As Long as There Are Stars Above You

by SegaBarrett



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Ghost John, M/M, Treat Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26152246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Paul has a visitor.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	As Long as There Are Stars Above You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sidewinder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidewinder/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own or know John or Paul, sadly. 
> 
> A/N: Title is from "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, which is apparently Paul's favorite song.

The light, gentle rain was rapping against Paul’s window. He rolled over in bed but found himself unable to get back to sleep. That was how it always seemed to be, after all – once he was jogged from his slumber, it was almost impossible to get back there again.

After twenty more minutes of tossing and turning, with no success, he rose with a sigh from the bed and leaned back, letting his back crack ever so slightly.

He wasn’t getting any younger – that much was for sure.

He’d make himself some tea and then, Paul resolved, he had better get to work. What exactly that meant… he wasn’t sure.

Ever since John had died, “work” had been slow in coming. He would take a pad of paper and jot down a few words, a few lines here and there. It was hard to read the words, sometimes – the ones he had written in the middle of the night before he allowed his eyes to adjust. 

He knew that he would be expected to come up with something eventually – they would want to hear something from him, and he had no idea what he was going to try to say. 

He could still remember all the news coverage of his “it’s a drag” comment – what else was he supposed to say? How was he supposed to put words to the horror that he felt every time he woke up and realized that it was real, that all of it had been real?

Paul pulled out the bench behind the piano and slowly, carefully sat down on it, letting out a sigh.

“How’s it going, Macca?”

Paul wobbled, nearly falling off the bench. It was a bolt directly into his heart, making him shudder.

“John.” He didn’t look up at first. He didn’t need to. Over the years, Paul had become innately attuned to John’s presence, even when he was sleeping. There was a blue aura when John was near, and it was here now. 

He wondered, if he didn’t look up, if John wouldn’t really be there – and then he wondered if that is what he wanted, or if that was what he was afraid would happen.

Finally, he turned. 

He wasn’t quite transparent, and he wasn’t quite opaque either. He had a pale white sheen to his skin that bounced off of him and, at the same time, didn’t quite touch him.

And his eyes were hard to read. That had been a thing about John; Paul had been able to read him if he could only look at his eyes.

When he was alive, that was. Paul nearly burst into hysterical giggles at that thought. This couldn’t have really happened, and it couldn’t really be true, either. Maybe the whole thing was just one long horrible dream that had somehow lasted… how long had it been? Weeks? Months?

Paul tilted his head slightly, keeping John in his view.

“John,” he said the name again, as if to convince himself.

“That’s my name,” John said with a smile, a hand sifting through his own bushy blonde hair and adjusting the glasses on his face. “Don’t wear it out.” Paul wondered how that worked – did the dead need glasses? It would make sense for John to have bad eyesight, even on the other side, in that weird kind of way.

“Why are you here?” Paul asked. He tried to snap it, tried to act as if he was annoying him by being here. Trying to act as if they were still caught in whatever their last feud had been – he couldn’t remember the cause.

“Why not?” John replied. “Why not come here?”

“Why not go home?” Paul suggested instead. “New York… is your home, isn’t it?”

“It was. And then it wasn’t.”

The sentence hung in the air, with the resolution of John’s decision to discard something because of the negative associations. Paul couldn’t blame him, if he was being completely honest, but he felt a suspicion that tomorrow, John might be back there in a flash. He always loved to pick up his discarded things and decide they were his again, whether he had destroyed them in a rage or not.

“Why here, then?” Paul pressed, again, “Are you still mad at me about… well, whatever the last thing I said to you that you were mad about?”

“Maybe I just like the company.” 

John glided across the floor, made his way over to the record player that Paul kept propped atop the table next to the piano. He liked to listen to records there, sometimes – never their records, though; there was something about hearing his voice, something that made him feel like he was trapped in amber. 

Right now, the record sitting on the turntable was the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds”, and John placed the needle and then stepped back before Paul could wonder how he had done so. 

The beginning of “God Only Knows” began, and Paul wasn’t sure that he could take it. Everything was closing in, and he was sure – he could be sure – that there were spikes on the walls if he looked hard enough.

How was he supposed to live in a world without John? More than that, how was he supposed to live in that world when John himself refused to let him go?

“Would you like to dance, Macca?”

Paul hesitated. This was going to be leaving behind “having trouble letting go” and going to what he would term “full on knackers”, but with everything that had happened, maybe that was exactly where he needed to end up. 

Maybe that was where they all ended up in the end.

Paul rose from his chair, feeling as if it was sinking away behind him, taking away his las possible escape from this.

His last possible tether, maybe. 

He knew he couldn’t tell anyone about this – and maybe that was what made it all better. Maybe that was the only thing that allowed him to decide, the fact that no prying eye could pull this apart. At last.

He crossed the floor, his arms extended.

_“God only knows what I’d be without you…”_

And John’s hands felt solid, real, and warm, for the first time in so long.

And Paul didn’t know what he would do without him. He vowed never to find out.


End file.
